Anchorage Daily News

Almost 10 years in the making, the restoration of lower Chester Creek in the heart of Anchorage began late this summer.

Some day, planners hope, this will allow all species of salmon to return to a stream that changed dramatically after being dammed in 1971. Unresolved is what the change might mean for the bears that once fed on those salmon.

"Historically, Chester Creek was home to all five species of salmon and Dolly Varden (char),'' then-mayor George Wuerch observed when restoration started moving forward in 1998. "A fish ladder was installed when the creek was impounded" in the early 1970s to create a pond for recreation, the now popular Westchester Lagoon.

The "ladder,'' as Wuerch called it, wasn't much of a ladder. It was more like a tunnel -- a dark, twisting, 6-foot-wide corrugated pipe running from Knik Arm under a sometimes-shaking Alaska Railroad embankment and about 150-feet of wetlands before emerging into the lagoon.

Pink, king, sockeye and chum salmon couldn't make it through, but cohos, the hardiest of all salmon, could. A 2001 study found several dozen of the fish still making it to the spawning grounds, but noted that once there had been "several thousand'' each year.

The public outcry to fix the situation began almost the day it was discovered the ladder was damaging salmon runs. But it took decades for citizens to get elected officials to agree to spend the millions of dollars needed.

Whether the silver salmon run will be allowed to rebuild to its historic size remains to be determined. The same goes for whether pink, king, sockeye and chum runs will be allowed or helped to re-establish themselves.

Ten years ago, nobody much worried about a salmon-filled creek drawing grizzlies into Midtown. But this year, a 731-pound grizzly, apparently prospecting the creek for fish, was struck and killed near the heavily used Sullivan Arena. Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Sean Farley said salmon that get far enough up Chester Creek to spawn on Fort Richardson have already attracted feeding bears.

Put more salmon in the creek, he said, and the bears are likely to follow the fish down toward civilization.

The new connection between Knik Arm and Chester Creek will allow for salmon control. The man-made creek will have a weir, which will enable the city to control the number of salmon getting into the creek. How many will be allowed back has not been decided. Some people would like to see runs returned to their natural size. Others are leery of that, worried about the spawned-out carcasses of salmon piling up and stinking in people's back yards and next to now-popular creek-side picnic and play areas, not to mention the bears.

There will be plenty of time for debate. The $5.5 million project isn't expected to be done until next year.

City engineers say it will not affect water levels in the lagoon. So skaters, who have become as common on the lagoon in winter as picnickers along its shores in summer, need not worry.

The work is expected to cause temporary disruptions for the railroad as the embankment that now supports the track is opened to allow construction of a box culvert with a natural gravel bottom.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of three federal agencies involved in the complex project along with the Municipality of Anchorage and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, sewer mains and petroleum pipelines on the Knik Arm side of the railroad embankment also need to be relocated to allow stream-channel reconstruction there.

NOAA restoration scientists had a video monitoring program set up this year to record salmon trying to make it through the old waterway, and they are scheduled to resume that project when the Chester Creek Aquatic Habitat Restoration Project is complete next year.

They're hoping it shows the work was successful in providing the salmon an easy route home. But, if the plan works as designed, success should be visible to everyone. A salmon viewing deck will be built over a new section of creek now being built between the railroad embankment and the existing Chester Creek bike and pedestrian path adjacent to the lagoon.

Find Craig Medred online at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588.

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